Harvard And DARPA Develop Software For Deconstructing Top 100 Rankings

If precipitation patterns are a primary attribute for calculating misery, Portland and Seattle are likely to rank near the top of the list.

By contrast, if misery is calculated as a function of the number of coffee houses in a city, Portland and Seattle may rank near the bottom of the list.

In the Letterman era, top 10 and top 100 rankings are available for nearly every imaginable aspect of contemporary life from cancer and obesity to sexual preferences and the geography of penis sizes.

As most people know, even the most objective of these ranking lists are loaded with all kinds of hidden biases, assumptions and subjective decisions.

The formulas used to rank different sets of data lists can be more or less compelling. The trouble is that differentiating the former from the latter is usually too laborious of an exercise for most people.

The result is that people misinterpret rankings by either taking them at face value or dismissing them altogether.

LineUp is an open-source application that allows the typical person to decipher the basis for different rankings based on multiple attributes.

LineUp is part of a larger visualization program called Caleydo, which was developed at Harvard, Johannes Kepler University, and Graz University of Technology. Caleydo visualizes genetic data and biological pathways to analyze and characterize cancer subtypes.

Unlike Caleydo, LineUp also applies to rankings developed from social, economic and demographic data.

"It liberates people," said Alexander Lex, a postdoctoral researcher at SEAS. "Imagine if a magazine published a ranking of 'best restaurants.' With this tool, we don't have to rely on the editors' skewed or specific perceptions. Everybody on the Internet can go there and see what's really in the data and what part is personal opinion."